Does Sustainability Investment Provide Adaptive Resilience to Ethical Investors? Evidence from Spain

Although sustainable and responsible investment (SRI) has quite recently become a hot research topic, scarcely any systematic research has been paid to the performance of this non-conventional approach to investment during the financial crisis that emerged in mid-2008 when the resilience of the financial markets was sorely tested. Such real-world resilience in practice is the subject of the current research which tests whether environmental, social and governance screens provides ethical investors with adaptive resilience in bull and bear market conditions by focussing on the SRI equity index of one of the most active markets in Europe in terms of ethical investment, the FTSE4Good-Ibex in Spain. Multivariate Generalized Autoregressive Conditional Heteroskedasticity (M-GARCH) analysis indicates that ethical investors in the equity market examined with evidence that greater resilience in severe business cycle shocks could be attributable to SRI by companies. Although limited to a single country study, the results have implications for investors seeking resilience in crisis: when individual values and beliefs towards sustainability tie with personal investment strategy, the end result is adaptive financial resilience, social well-being and environmental defence.     

Modelling the faddish, fashionable and efficient diffusion of agricultural technologies: A case study of the diffusion of wool testing technology in Australia

This study investigates the nature of innovation diffusion in an agricultural context. The dominant agricultural diffusion models assume that an economically rational choice is made to adopt or reject agricultural technologies. However, recent studies of agricultural innovation highlight the ‘irrational’ and potentially ‘inefficient’ nature of the diffusion in this context. To investigate how and why agricultural technologies are adopted or rejected, we examine the diffusion of wool testing technologies in the Australian wool industry using the Bass diffusion model and Abrahamson's diffusion and rejection typology. The results show that diffusion of agricultural innovation is not simply an efficient choice made to close observable performance gaps. The findings suggest that the adoption of inefficient innovations and the rejection of efficient innovations can be driven by an adopter's social context, powerful external influences and imitation within an adopter group and that these drivers change over time, suggesting an evolutionary social process underlies the diffusion of agricultural technologies.     

Menopause and the workplace: New directions in HRM research and HR practice

This paper offers two key arguments. The first is that HRM scholars and HR practitioners need to pay a good deal more attention to the bi‐directional relationship between menopause and the workplace—how menopausal symptoms can affect women's experience of work and how work can exacerbate a woman's symptoms. We outline the social responsibility, demographic, legal and business cases which explain the urgency of more research and more concerted practice in this area. Our second argument concerns the importance of future research and practice adopting an intersectional political economy approach, in order to better understand the considerable differences between how women going through menopause transition experience work. Here, we offer arguments ranging from the macro‐ through the meso‐ down to the micro‐level of these differences, in so doing setting an agenda for the work to come on this very significant issue.     

International income-shifting regulations: Empirical evidence from Australia and Canada

This study examines market reactions to two different approaches to reduce income shifting in an international setting. The two methods are described and event studies are performed using stock market data from Canada and Australia. Samples of companies from both countries are partitioned into firms predicted to be affected versus unaffected by each country's event. Australia's regulation taxes profits arising in low-tax subsidiaries at Australian rates. Canada's method defines acceptable transfer prices (arm's-length transactions) and describes enforcement and audit policies. We find evidence of stock market reactions on some of the event dates for Australian and Canadian firms affected by these two approaches.     

Legislated Ethics: From Enron to Sarbanes-Oxley,the Impact on Corporate America

This paper explores the financial reporting scandals of the past decade and the resulting U.S. legislative attempts to impose ethical behavior and control the incidence of new reporting problems via the Sarbanes-Oxley legislation. We begin with a brief historical perspective followed by assertions of ethical consequences of legislation with discussions of key recent corporate scandals, the motives for the frauds, and the consequences. Ethics related provisions of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act are discussed with the potential impact of the legislation on the likelihood of similar future frauds and accompanying prognosis for future corporate ethical behavior.     

CSR, Co-optation and Resistance: The Emergence of New Agonistic Relations Between Business and Civil Society

This article examines the theoretical implications of the changing relationships between NGOs and businesses that have emerged as a response to the evolving agenda around CSR and sustainable development. In particular, it focuses upon examining whether greater engagement from non-governmental organisations (NGOs) in this area reflects a process of appropriation and co-optation of protest by the business community. To examine this process, the article considers two forms of appropriation—appropriation of language and appropriation via participation—as a basis for discussion. While co-optation pressures are identified within both areas, the article argues that co-optation is identified almost as an inevitable outcome of engagement without significant consideration of the ability of movements to identify and respond to these processes. In identifying an alternative approach, the article utilises Mouffe’s framework of agonistic pluralism. Mouffe’s framework, it is argued, provides an understanding of the way in which agonistic relationships are emerging between NGOs and businesses while highlighting the continuance of conflict between parties struggling to influence the contested interpretations of responsible business.     

Explaining ethnic unemployment and activity rates: evidence from the QLFS in the 1990s and 2000s

This article uses data from the Quarterly Labour Force Survey for 1992–95 and 2000–03 to examine changes in ethnic unemployment and economic activity. The intention was to compare the relatively high unemployment era of the 1990s with the lower unemployment era of the 2000s. Although the ethnic minority unemployment situation has improved, only half of the difference between white and non‐white unemployment can be attributed to differences in observed characteristics. This suggests that a large unexplained discriminatory element still exists for most ethnic minorities. This has become larger for Pakistani/Bangladeshi men, implying a widening of the unexplained ethnic differential.